The George Soros Foreign Policy

By: Thomas E. Brewton

If Mr. Soros guided his investments and financial market speculations with the same degree of precision he applies to foreign policy, he would long since have been bankrupt.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article dated August 15, 2006, billionaire investor George Soros critiques the Bush administration’s reaction to the events of 9/11. Mr. Soros is, as most people know, a far-left liberal who spent a reputed $20 million or so backing socialist John Kerry in the last presidential election.

Readers hoping for specific plans from Mr. Soros will be disappointed. Liberals like Mr. Soros continue to offer criticism, but no alternatives other than vague platitudes and surrendering to Iran via troop withdrawal. Theirs is a chess game without strategy beyond the opening move. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s remark about second marriages, liberal foreign policy represents the triumph of hope over experience.

Mr. Soros tells us, “The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies…… Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large; we need to focus on finding them, and preventing attacks like the one foiled in England.”

[Comment: Exactly what different measures must we take to capture Al Queda leaders? Should we alienate Pakistan by invading its territory and precipitating the downfall of President Musharraf?

What specifically must we do to prevent future terror attacks that will not instantly be denounced by the ACLU, the New York Times, and Congressional liberals? Even random searches of handbags in New York City subways, after the London bombings, were fiercely resisted by the ACLU.

Mr. Soros and his fellow socialists in Congress talk a good game, while promoting an emasculated, ineffective intelligence policy. 9/11 might have been prevented, had the ACLU and Democratic-controlled Congresses not gutted the CIA's staff of overseas operatives at the same time that they prevented the FBI and the CIA from sharing information. The truth is that liberals don't want an effective domestic surveillance program, for fear that it will spotlight their anti-American financial
supporters and anti-American academics in the sacred Halls of Ivy.

Even if we apprehend or kill Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, autonomous Al Queda cells here and in Europe are in place for future terror attacks, witness foiled plots in the United States and the bombing of Spanish trains and London buses and subways. In the UK airline bombing plot, British intelligence can discover no direct link with Al Queda, yet the modus operandi bears all the earmarks of Al Queda.

Those terror cells were established, not in reaction to administration policies since 9/11, but much earlier during the Clinton administrations. Bin Ladin announced his intentions to destroy the West while Mr. Clinton was President, both in tapes distributed via Al Jazeera and in interviews with Western newsmen.]

Mr. Soros continues: “What makes the war on terror self-defeating? First, war by its very nature creates innocent victims……… The deaths, injuries and humiliation of civilians generate rage and resentment among their families and communities that in turn serves to build support for terrorists.”

[Comment: Mr. Soros's description applies, not just to Iraq, but to all wars. Does he mean that we should have taken no military action against Hitler, but have relied on negotiations? Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tried that. Non-combatants doubtless were bitterly resentful when the Allies retaliated for the London Blitz and our armies swept across Europe, decimating German forces, with inevitable destruction and death among civilians.]

Mr. Soros’s final insight is: “… terrorism is an abstraction…… It inhibits much-needed negotiations with Iran and Syria because they are states that support terrorist groups.”

[Comment: What, pray tell, have we, France, and Germany been doing for the past three years with regard to Syria and Iran? There have been endless rounds of negotiations with both countries and numerous fruitless efforts to get the UN to exert some of its imagined influence.]

Then Mr. Soros goes for the jugular: “… the war on terror drives a wedge between “us” and “them.”…… we fail to notice that we also become perpetrators in the process; the rest of the world, however, does notice. That is how such a wide gap has arisen between America and much of the world.”

[Comment: The English language defines our actions as retaliation, not as perpetrating aggression. Mr. Soros's definition precludes self-defense if the rest of the world wants the attackers to win.

A dozen years of UN "diplomacy" did nothing to prevent 9/11, yet Mr. Soros by default is advocating that we do nothing to deter Islamic jihad other than humbly leaving our fate in the hands of the third-world-controlled UN General Assembly.

This is hardly a surprise. Mr. Soros is a socialist who, having made his money under capitalist rules, now opposes our constitutional system of government (in which private property rights originally were of equal stature with all other personal rights) by funding socialist organizations here and abroad. Underlying his critique of the Bush administration is the insupportable hypothesis of Socialist Internationals in the 19th and early 20th centuries: that all aggression and war are forged by the continuance of private property, that redistributing wealth internationally will satisfy all the aims of Islamic jihad and stop Muslim aggressions. That's what he means by "negotiations."

None of this accords with the facts. Organizers of the jihad are well educated men from very wealthy families. No Islamic terrorist has demanded more foreign aid or redistribution of our property to the rest of the world.

Leaders of the jihad repeatedly and uniformly have declared that their aim is conquest of the non-Muslim world and its subjugation under sharia. Those are non-negotiable demands.

The sad truth is that the jihadists respect only remorselessly wielded, lethal power. And they are emboldened by the sense that the coming triumph of liberals in our electoral process will begin removing all barriers to Islamic world domination.]

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 (www.thomasbrewton.com)

About The Author Thomas E. Brewton:Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.